Black Ops: The 12th Spider Shepherd Thriller (7 page)

The inspector looked across at the custody sergeant. ‘I think we need the doctor in here to assess his mental condition,’ he said.

‘Look, I’m just trying to make this easier for you,’ said Shepherd. ‘Within the next hour someone is going to come and take care of this. They’ll be accompanied by a senior officer and he’s going to want to know what you did in the way of processing. And trust me, the more you do now the more you’re going to have to undo down the line. Just let me sit in a cell for an hour and I’ll be out of your hair.’

The inspector looked at Shepherd coldly for several seconds, then nodded at the sergeant. ‘Fingerprint him, DNA him and bag his clothes.’

‘Fine,’ said Shepherd.

‘Name?’ asked the custody sergeant.

Shepherd stared at the officer but didn’t reply.

‘We can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way, but the end result is going to be the same.’

Shepherd still said nothing.

The sergeant waved a constable over. ‘Turn out his pockets,’ said the sergeant.

The constable pulled a wallet from Shepherd’s back pocket. He took out a driving licence and compared the photograph to Shepherd’s face before handing it to the sergeant. The sergeant pushed his spectacles further up his nose and smiled as he examined the licence. ‘Craig Brannan. Date of birth, July fifteenth 1975.’ He smiled down at Shepherd. ‘See now, that wasn’t too difficult, was it?’

Shepherd continued to stare at the sergeant but kept his mouth shut. He’d done all he could do, said all he could, now it was just a matter of waiting for it to be over.

‘Ever been in trouble with the police before, Mr Brannan?’ asked the sergeant. He tapped away on his computer for several seconds and then smiled thinly. ‘Apparently not.’ He looked at the constable. ‘Anything else in his pockets?’

The constable fished out Shepherd’s keys, two sets, one for his flat and one for his car. He put them down on the counter. ‘That’s everything.’

The sergeant looked down at Shepherd. ‘Your driving licence has your current address, does it, Mr Brannan?’

Shepherd stared sullenly at the sergeant but didn’t reply.

The sergeant smiled. ‘Well, we’ll know soon enough, won’t we.’ He nodded at the constable. ‘Right, let’s process Mr Brannan as quickly as possible, shall we? I’m sure the anti-terrorism boys will be wanting a word with him soon enough.’

S
hepherd spent just thirty minutes in the cell. They had taken a DNA swab from the inside of his cheeks, scrapings from under his fingernails, swabbed the palms and backs of his hands, removed his clothing and given him a white paper suit and paper shoe covers for his feet. They had made him place his hands on the LiveScan fingerprint recognition screen and taken his prints and photographed him from the front and sides including a full body photograph. They didn’t give him a coffee or a sandwich but every five minutes or so an eye would appear at the peephole to check on him.

Eventually the door opened and the custody sergeant waved for him to stand up. ‘You’re free to go,’ he said. He avoided eye contact with Shepherd as he motioned for him to leave.

Shepherd stepped out of the cell where a uniformed chief superintendent was standing next to a man and a woman. She was blonde and pretty. She wore a black suit with a white blouse and had a large Prada black leather bag over her shoulder. Shepherd doubted she could have been older than twenty-five, but she carried herself with more confidence than the chief superintendent who was probably twice her age. Her companion was in his early thirties, his hair slightly too long to be fashionable, in a dark brown leather jacket and carrying a black leather holdall. The audience that had been gathered in the custody suite before – including the uniformed inspector – had gone, as had the armed cops.

‘We’re sorry this has taken so long,’ said the girl, offering a well-manicured hand with scarlet nails. ‘Katy.’

Shepherd doubted that Katy was her real name, but he shook hands.

‘This is Bernard.’

Bernard nodded and shook hands with Shepherd.

‘Ms Button sends her apologies,’ said Katy. ‘As I’m sure you can understand she’s a bit busy at the moment.’

‘Not a problem,’ said Shepherd.

Bernard handed him the holdall. ‘Your clothes are already being processed so it’ll take us time to get them back. In the meantime there’s a change of clothes in there and we’ve got a car outside to run you home.’

Shepherd unzipped the bag and looked inside. Black jeans, a blue polo shirt, socks and underwear, and a pair of Nikes. He looked at the training shoes and smiled when he saw that they were his size. There were times when MI5 could be so bloody efficient, and other times when they couldn’t organise the proverbial piss-up in a brewery.

‘There’s a room over there where you can change,’ said the chief superintendent. ‘We’ll have your belongings in a minute or two.’ He looked uncomfortable, as if he wished he were anywhere else but in the custody suite at that moment.

‘Thanks,’ said Shepherd.

The chief superintendent extended his hand. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to shake your hand. What you did out there, you saved a lot of lives. I’m sorry for the way you were treated.’

Shepherd shook his hand firmly. ‘No problem, your men were just doing their jobs.’

‘I appreciate your understanding,’ said the officer. He turned to address the custody sergeant. ‘This lady and gentleman are to have full access to anything they want, including the CCTV footage. Whatever they want, they get. Understood?’

The custody sergeant nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

Bernard went behind the counter and started tapping on the custody sergeant’s keyboard. Katy took Shepherd over to the room where he could change into his clothes. ‘We’ll be here for a while removing all trace of you from the system,’ she said. ‘Your car is in the car park, the driver knows where to go. Ms Button said she’d call you later this evening.’

Shepherd smiled. ‘I’ll look forward to that.’

T
he MI5 car dropped Shepherd outside his apartment in Battersea. The two-bedroom flat had impressive views over the Thames and was some compensation for the fact that he had been away from his Hereford home for the best part of three months while overseeing the surveillance operation. He took the lift up to the ninth floor and let himself in. The burglar alarm began to beep and he tapped in the four-digit code before heading to the shower to wash the smell of the cells off him.

Later he cooked himself a steak and ate it with a salad and a bottle of lager as he watched the various news channels cover the Euston station attacks. Sky News seemed to have the best police sources as they had already identified Khalaf and had sent a camera crew to his address in Stoke Newington. They had also managed to get hold of footage from half a dozen of the mobile phones that had been filming the events at the station. The images were shaky and blurred but gave a good indication of the panic that the attackers had caused. There was one video of one of the attackers slashing at a teenage girl with his machete, his face contorted with anger, then the attacker had turned towards whoever was holding the phone and the picture shook and went blank. Sky showed the short videos again and again with various commentaries provided by the presenters.

The BBC’s coverage seemed to be concerned mainly with so-called terrorist experts, mainly academics, pontificating about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and making wild guesses as to what the authorities would do in the wake of the attack. There were interviews with Muslim groups who were placing flowers at the scene and a statement from the Muslim Council of Great Britain saying how they deplored the attacks. CNN had managed to find two American tourists who had been at the station and ran the interview with them at least twice an hour even though they had fled as soon as the attacks had started.

The station had been closed for several hours and armed police had appeared at all mainline stations, which had caused travel chaos that had spilled over into rush hour and there were still long delays getting commuters out of the capital. The Mayor of London had given a short press conference, appealing for calm and thanking the police for their sterling work. ‘Londoners will not be intimidated by random acts of violence,’ he had said, and went on to say that he took pride from the fact that London was one of the most ethnically rich cities in the world, and that would remain its strength.

The Met’s Commissioner also gave a press conference saying that security would be increased at all transport hubs in the capital but that he did not expect any further attacks. Shepherd hoped that he was right, but he knew that MI5 was tracking at least a dozen other groups like Khalaf’s in the capital. He wanted Londoners to carry on as usual, but to be vigilant.

It wasn’t until late evening that his phone finally rang.

‘Spider, so sorry, as you can imagine it’s been a bit hectic here.’ It was Charlotte Button, his MI5 boss.

‘There’s a lot of flack flying around, I suppose.’

‘Not as much as you’d think. Anyway, how are you?’

‘Fine and dandy.’

‘No injuries?’

‘Luckily the Met’s finest managed to keep their impulses in check and not shoot me. But yeah, it did get a bit frantic and I was standing there with a bloodstained knife in my hand.’

‘Have you been watching it on the TV?’

‘Sure. They’re not showing any CCTV from Euston station?’

‘No, and they won’t be until we’ve been through it. Don’t worry, you’ll be edited out of it.’

‘I hope so,’ said Shepherd. ‘The last thing I need is to be on Sky News and plastered over the tabloids. That would put a real damper on my undercover career.’

‘It’s being taken care of as we speak. Anyone who saw what you did has been tracked down and approached and they’ve all agreed to keep it to themselves. You met Katy and Bernard? They took care of everything at Islington. You’re out of the system there now. Look, we need to meet, obviously, but I’m going to be flat out for the rest of the night. We’ve got a briefing with Number Ten and there’s a Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre meeting after that. I’ll be here until the early hours. Why don’t you get some sleep and I’ll see you tomorrow?’

‘Saturday?’

‘This is important and there is some time pressure. Let’s make it morning so that you can head back to Hereford before lunch.’

‘Do I come to you?’

‘I’m out and about tomorrow, let’s make it outside of Thames House. I’ll text you the location. Sweet dreams.’ The line went dead.

Shepherd put down his phones. He doubted that his dreams would be sweet. The adrenaline was still coursing through his system and images of what had happened at Euston station were constantly flashing through his mind. He looked at his watch. Ten thirty. It was late, and running at night in London wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences, with drunks shouting advice and encouragement and pedestrians constantly fearing that pounding feet signified an impending mugging. There was a well-equipped gym in his building that was open all hours so he changed into a T-shirt and shorts and headed down for an hour or two’s exercise.

A
double-knock on the hotel door woke Harper from a dreamless sleep. He wrapped a towel round his waist and padded across the threadbare carpet and peered through the security peephole. It was an anonymous grey man in a dark suit, carrying an aluminium briefcase. Harper opened the door. The man scrutinised Harper’s face for a couple of seconds as if satisfying himself that he had the right man, then handed over the briefcase. Harper took it and closed the door. He sat on the bed, opened the case and checked the contents. There was the passport in the name of Müller, the comms kit he had requested and the necessary backup to his legend: credit cards, driving licence, a receipt from a Geneva restaurant, and a Photoshopped and carefully cracked and crumpled snapshot of ‘Herr Müller’ and a blonde woman in front of the Kremlin.

Harper stowed the briefcase under his bed, then showered, shaved and changed into a clean shirt and jeans. He went outside, bought a copy of the
Sun
and found a café down a side street that served him a full English breakfast and half-decent coffee. He polished off the eggs, bacon, sausage, fried bread and mushrooms and drank three cups of coffee as he read the paper, spending most of his time on the sports pages. As he’d told Button, Harper wasn’t generally concerned with politics or world affairs. So long as he and his friends were okay, he didn’t really care what was going on in the world around him. He had never voted, he hadn’t paid tax since leaving the army, and even if pressed he doubted he’d be able to name more than a handful of the men and women who ran the country.

After finishing his third cup of coffee he paid his bill and spent a couple of hours wandering around London, keeping an ever-watchful eye out for tails. On the way back to his hotel he stopped off at a Pret A Manger and bought a dozen sandwiches and five bottles of water.

S
hepherd paid for his takeaway coffee and tea and took them outside, then jogged across the road taking care not to spill them. The door that led to the upper floors was between a florist’s and a charity shop. It had been a while since Button had summoned him to the location for a meeting and the last time he’d been there the charity shop had been a butcher’s. The main door had been repainted, too. It had been white but was now a pillar-box red. The three brass nameplates were still at the side of the door, as was the entryphone with three buttons. Shepherd pressed the middle button and waved up at the CCTV camera that monitored the entrance. The door buzzed and Shepherd went inside. Button had the door to the office open as he climbed the stairs. She smiled at the cups he was holding.

‘You are so sweet,’ she said.

She was wearing a dark blue suit with a skirt cut just above the knee and matching blue high heels. He handed her the tea and she ushered him inside and closed the door.

‘Wasn’t this a SOCA safe house?’ he asked.

‘For a while,’ she answered. ‘But not any more. The NCA doesn’t have much use for safe houses.’

The National Crime Agency took over from the Serious Organised Crime Agency in October 2013 to become the UK’s equivalent of the FBI, supposedly leading the fight against organised crime, human trafficking, drugs and cyber crime as well as being the main point of contact with international agencies such as Europol and Interpol. SOCA had been a spectacular failure and as far as Shepherd could see the NCA didn’t appear to be doing much better.